INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY PATTERNS - ACCOUNTING FOR INPUT QUALITY, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND RESEARCH

In this paper, we present measures of land and labor productivity for a group of ninety-eight developed and developing countries using an en tirely new data set with annual observations spanning the past three d ecades. The substantial cross-country and intertemporal variation in p roductivity in our sample is linked to both natural and economic facto rs. We extend previous work by dealing with multiple sources of system atic measurement error in conventional agricultural inputs. The mix of conventional inputs, indicators of quality of agricultural inputs, an d the amount of publicly provided infrastructure are all significant i n explaining observed cross-sectional differences in productivity patt erns.